Memoirous

“The only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Really? How does this work or what would it look like?  from Wikipedia The Bald Knobbers , an 1880s vigilante group from Missouri , wearing crude " blackface " masks typical of the post-Reconstruction era in the United States -- as portrayed in the 1919 film, The Shepherd of the Hills . Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. in 1928 another example of citizen justice one man with a gun saving his town from thugs George Zimmerman, another man with a gun who invoked the Stand-Your-Ground Law to justify killing Trayvon Martin--an unarmed teen carrying Skittles Ruby Ridge--from all reports a major cock-up by gov't law officials* also from Wikii: On about August 24, 1992, the fourth day of the siege on the Weaver family, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Danny Coulson wrote a memo: OPR 004477 1. Charge against Weaver is Bull Shit. Mar...

This is horrible. Kafkaesque. I woke up with a sudden realization—I’m not a bug. Much worse. I am middle-aged. I expected to feel this way after my parent’s death early last year. I’ve been feeling slower, not as enthusiastic about exercise—something I never went two days in a row without doing. I wouldn’t get into running shoes for anything less than 5 miles. But I suspect it wasn’t this that nudged me into melancholy. Perhaps when a friend mentioned he was having cataract surgery. What! No worries, he responded, it’s outpatient! Or when a Facebook friend from highschool announced that he was retiring from teaching at the end of the school year. Congratulations! Or that a good friend, even younger than I, was gifted with their first grandchild. Mazel tov! These are significant milemarkers. We gauge how far we’ve come and where we might be going next. Where are we going next? I think what I’m feeling is a brittleness, a great uncertainty. That what I once thoug...

and Inauguration Day!

My friend and underground street photographer, Fred Burkhart is having a gallery opening tomorrow, January 18 at Alibi Fine Art here in Chicago (1966 West Montrose Avenue  Chicago, IL 60613). I met Fred a few years ago and I can truly say he has opened my eyes. I see things differently. Also he wears hats. Some of Fred’s most controversial subjects has been an intimate portrait of members of the KKK and chronicling Chicago's Gay Pride Parade since its beginning. In addition he is the house photographer for JesusPeople USA a 350-member community on the northside of Chicago. He is one of ours. Here is a clip from a recent article found in the Examiner . ** Burkhart’s memoir is his art. **He says decisions about what he photographed never felt deliberate. “Photography is a collaboration, and sometimes it’s not on the surface. When you fall in love with someone, you know it, pow. You’re choosing each other, and there’s a certain trust there. When you photogr...

for Mike There was a time when we were so poor we had no debit card, no bank account. If we lost our token to ride the L we just jumped the turnstile. More than once we had to walk when the buses stopped running—miles from home. One time we were stranded at Cook County Hospital without a quarter between us to call a friend for a pick up. With our treat money we used to buy a quart of the cheapest ice cream and saw through the carton, splitting it in half. Going out to eat was getting a dollar slice at Uptown. We didn’t do that too often. Usually we shopped at the Freestore and ate donos, donated day-old doughnuts. On our day off we’d go to the No Exit Café off the Morse L stop for half-price coffee and bad poetry. We’d leave smelling like cigarette smoke. In the cold, crystallized air halos wavered around the street lamps, and we’d hold hands—so happy, so blessed.

I’ve written quite a bit here at Memoirous about being a content hack. Not really—though that’s how it feels, sometimes. My last post and this one are about process. An attempt at clarifying or explaining to myself what it is I do. I am honored to once again receive a grant from the Illinois Arts council, but along with awards comes a tandem inferiority complex. Do I actually deserve this? Is it a fluk—an accident—and will be withdrawn once “they” discover I am a charlatan? These emotions (or is it faulty reasoning? Either way I am convinced), by the way, are NOT helpful to the process. I’ve been writing since age 7. Even before I acquired reading, I wrote in a code—hoping later to remember what those little symbols stood for. I desperately wanted to write a story. I believe my first poem was about a tree. It was wonderful! I was at the same time delighted to discover that many words rhyme with tree. The symbol for tree was very literal—it was more difficult finding the ap...

Okay, this is by all accounts crazy, like jet propulsion--or in view of the Christian calendar--the opposite of "ordinary" time, sonic time. I submitted a flash and five minutes later it was accepted and within the hour posted here . The piece was totally spun from my head. I had the idea one EARLY morning (I am a morning cook and am up before EVERYONE) while listening to the radio. I just imagined a woman, I imagined her on her birthday, then I imagined her sorry life and the tenets or cords that hold that fragile life together, the moral of the story. And coupled those thoughts with twilight, or those periods when the sun has not come out all day, like living in a fog or swimming underwater. My thoughts flitted and spun as if turning somersaults--without the heaviness of gravity. This is what I wrote about. Sort of. What came out might not at all have been what I was actually thinking, but the result of eating too much popcorn the night before. Nevertheless--a flash. I ...

"When big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning."--in a letter from Melville to Hawthorne That's what I'm about. This next year I want to have a big heart, go bold, be not afraid. I also like the part about striking together. I'm tired of the little jingles, the sound barely heard above the din around me. I want to ring out--and to accomplish this I might have to find similar hearts willing to sound together. Interestingly enough, Melville penned this letter on the cusp of launching Moby-Dick --a book that would ultimately sink his career. No one knew what to do with that book. It was like none other, and thus fell off the charts. That's me again--always on the cusp, working on something that leaves editors shaking their heads. It's too micro, too macro, too juvenile (do they mean YA?), too cross-over, too outside, tooooo. What they mean is: Who will read this? 2013 will be the year I find my reader(s). Let's strike togeth...